Mobile Speech Applications for the Vision

One of the latest applications for handheld devices is one designed for the vision-impaired by ScanSoft and Cingular. According to the American Foundation for the Blind, there are approximately 10 million people who are blind or have low vision. While there are numerous desktop applications designed for the vision-impaired, the Cingular TALKS program using ScanSoft’s ETI-Eloquence text-to-speech software is one of the first for the wireless phone market.

Erodio Diaz, who operates E. Diaz Real Estate & Associates Inc., has been completely blind since 1955 and has looked for ways to make himself as self-sufficient as possible ever since. He has had portable communications since the days of the “brick phone,” but found many of the Internet and text-messaging features of some of the more recent devices to be of little use due to his disability. While he could dial the phone (currently a Nokia 6620) easily enough and can type in text messages and emails, his disability had prevented him from checking typed messages for accuracy, so he was reluctant to send them.

With his real estate and mortgage business, Diaz estimates that he spends 50 to 60 percent of the time out of the office (with the aid of a sighted assistant). The increasing proliferation of email and text messaging has encouraged him to want to find a way to use those technologies without being in the office or requiring a sighted person to assist him.

A long-time customer of Cingular and its predecessor, Diaz discussed the needs of the visually impaired with the company and found a sympathetic ear. He eagerly agreed to be one of the pilot customers for the software, which was offered to all Cingular customers in September of 2004.

The application reads back numbers/letters as the user enters them, as well as entire messages, enabling Diaz to confirm the accuracy of the messages he writes before sending them. Similarly, the application reads any text messages or emails that Diaz receives on the device.

Additionally, Diaz can access spoken information about the phone’s battery level, network and signal strength, caller ID information, logs of incoming and outgoing calls, and other settings (i.e., ring tones) or tools (i.e., calculator).

“I’m three to four times more productive than I was before. That’s very meaningful to me,” Diaz says.

The only drawback Diaz cites is that the speech functionality doesn’t work when he uses the conference-calling feature. Even with this disadvantage, the mobile speech application “is wonderful,” Diaz says. “It’s opened a whole new world of accessibility.”

 

Source: Speech Technology Magazine